


You Got a Friend in Me

by moontyrant



Series: Bucky Barnes: Professional Ghost Botherer [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes-centric, Dehumanization, First Dance, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, M/M, Torture, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-04 16:43:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5341223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moontyrant/pseuds/moontyrant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hydra handler pushed a slim handgun into Bucky's hand. “Your assignment is to eliminate this target. And then you will be ready.”<br/>He did not ask any questions. He did not ask who the man was, or why he needed to be eliminated, or what he would be ready for. Questions led to pain.<br/>The target cried in earnest, blubbering through his gag as fat tears stained his shirt. The gun fit the palm of his hand perfectly, like his hand and the gun had been made for each other. He took aim. He fired. Red sprayed across the pristine white of the room.</p>
<p>Or:</p>
<p>In which the Winter Soldier is a meme, Bucky Barnes is MIA, Hydra has a demon floating around and Steve is sad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Got a Friend in Me

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning: There is torture in this here fic. I don't normally write dark stuff, but this is hella dark, at least by my standards.

Bucky Barnes awoke in his cell to gruel and a few angry commands in Italian. He sneered at the jailor du jour and got his teeth bloodied as a reward. What a beautiful day.

 

It started as a meme. Steve didn’t use his name when they were being hounded by the press, instead calling him “soldier.” As in “Eyes forward, soldier,” when it looked like Bucky was going to actually talk to the paparazzi. As far as epithets go, Steve could do worse. Calling him “soldier” protected not only Bucky’s identity but his relationship with Steve. Their extremely not platonic relationship. Now, Bucky himself never really bothered hiding his orientation, but Steve wasn’t ready to hold hands in public, let alone become a gay national icon. For that matter, Bucky wasn’t up for being in the public eye any more than he had to be, either, and making their relationship public would mean an awful lot of invasive interviews and rude speculation.

 The nickname when out and about coupled with his penchant for dressing in a ridiculous amount of winter gear whenever he left the safe warmth of the tower—thick mittens, a winter coat over his sweatshirt over another sweatshirt, a scarf that would put Tom Baker to shame, a trapper hat and his furry boots—earned him the title Winter Soldier in the time it took for a blogger to take a photo of him and throw some words on it: “Winter is Coming.”

From there the meme got some traction. It wasn’t a big thing, but every once and a while Bucky would come across his own mug with some new words at the bottom of the picture on Facebook or Tumblr. He would scowl from the screen of his phone with captions like “Winter Soldier Does Not Approve,” or “Brace Yourselves/The Polar Vortex is Coming,” or “Captain America Called Me Ugly/I said Bitch Where.”

 

“The Winter Soldier.” The interrogation chamber was poorly lit, and Bucky surmised that the whole building was in disrepair. He had yet to come across a room without a crack in the wall or ceiling. He lay strapped to a table, head encased in a vise, wrist and ankles lashed tightly in place by unyielding strips of leather. Someone with the right engineering know-how had removed his metal arm entirely, leaving him lopsided, imbalanced and, hah, unarmed. He stared up at the single long crack in the ceiling.

An unpleasant man stepped into his periphery, smirking. “I’m so glad I could get a chance to speak with you. Do you know who I am?”

Bucky kept his eyes on the ceiling and his mouth firmly shut.

“Ah, reticence will get you nowhere, my lad. I have a few questions for you, and as long as you answer them no harm will come to you.”

 

Steve wanted to take things slow. When Bucky mastered life with his prosthetic Steve all but forced him to take Clint’s apartment. (Clint shared a space with Natasha and had only been to “his” apartment twice since moving to the tower.) So Steve and Bucky had their own space, and Bucky pretty much lived with Steve anyway. Four nights out of seven he wound up sleeping on Steve’s couch; they liked to stay up late and watch movies, eat popcorn, touch.

Touch was a Thing for Steve. He didn’t like sudden movements or grabbing. And he was painfully shy and insecure, which would have been funny if it weren’t so real. Captain America didn’t want to be seen undressed. He had stipulations about public handholding—not that he said so, but Bucky noticed the way he constantly looked over his shoulder if they were out on the street—it didn’t take a genius to figure out why a man from the forties didn’t want to be caught displaying his affection with his gay lover.

They took it slow. No sex even after six months: no heavy petting, no French kissing, no oral, no sleeping in the same bed. But there were pecks on the mouth and cheeks, hand holding when alone, back rubs, tickle fights and roughhousing.

Oh, and sparring.

 

Bucky screamed through the mouth guard. Hydra had no problem shooting him up with drugs, peeling off his fingernails or frying him with electrodes, but apparently they drew the line at letting him bite off his own tongue. Everyone needs standards.

“I must commend you. You hold up beautifully under my favorite interrogation techniques,” his torturer du jour said evenly. “Most people pass out by the time we get this far. You must have a substantially higher pain tolerance than most. No matter. Everyone breaks,” he grinned, “sooner or later.”

In truth, Bucky had a pretty average pain tolerance. But three tattoos, a busted femur (that skiing trip had been a little too rich for his blood) and a year of dealing with rambunctious (read: fucking violent) spirits had taught him how to keep pain at arms-length. It was happening to him, but it didn’t live inside him. _Let it rattle through me,_ he chanted silently, _like a wind through a house._

He stared unblinking up at the ceiling, and got the distinct impression that it was staring back. Bucky breathed in and out hard through his nose and braced himself for another surge of electricity.

 

Clint Barton took him down to the firing range twice a week when he wasn’t on mission, and Natasha taught Bucky the basics of self-defense. He remembered lesson one being “Run like your ass is on fire.” It was also Natasha who, after two weeks, decided he needed another extracurricular and dumped him on Bruce Banner’s living room rug. Shooting various kinds of firearms, learning Krav Maga and going through yoga poses next to a guy who could turn into a giant green rage monster on command gave Bucky a pretty good idea of his limits.

And then he took up sparring with Steve Rogers.

Steve fought like a woman. Which meant that most sparring sessions ended with him throwing off Bucky’s center of gravity and then throwing Bucky on the mats. Or Steve would stick his long, long limbs into Bucky’s space and trip him up. Or if Bucky got a good hold on him, Steve would wriggle like and eel and roughly push him off. Still, the beating Steve doled out had nothing on the Natasha-inflicted bruises up and down Bucky’s body. It was just infuriating.

 

Hydra kept Bucky in a pitch black room when he wasn’t in use. He had no sense of where one day ended and the next began; his meals arrived erratically if at all, and his sleep schedule had been sent straight to sleep hell. Wherever he was, they kept him somewhere well underground and didn’t bother with frivolities like heat or blankets. So Bucky crouched in the corner of the room away from the door, shivering and huddled up, nursing the fresh burns on his fingers and toes while they went numb.

And some stretches of time were marked with the speakers going on the fritz. Or at least that was what Bucky liked to call it in the privacy of his head. Hydra funneled loud beeps and screams and squeals into his cell if he looked too much like falling asleep. And though he had no idea how much time passed since his capture, he knew that too many days without sleep could lead to the Weird Shit.

In finals week when he’d gone to school, that meant the caffeine, sleep deprivation and academic stress would all gang up on him and make him start to see things that weren’t there. He would catch cats darting across the room from the corner of his eye, when no cats lived in the dorms. Or he would see bugs creeping down the walls only to whip his head around and see the stately blank white of school walls everywhere.

And so, huddled up in the dark with the cold and the pain and the hunger and the exhaustion ganging up on him, the Weird Shit set upon him.

I’ve been watching you, James Barnes.

Bucky curled in tighter on himself, screwing his eyes shut and clamping his numb hand over one ear. A hallucination, subtle enough he almost didn’t catch it.

You are going to break, James Barnes. Give them what they want.

Bucky focused on breathing, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Or was it in through the mouth, out through the nose? And wasn’t he supposed to count when he did it?

If you give them what they want, your suffering ends.

“Yeah, with a bullet in my head,” he gritted out before he could stop himself.

There are worse ways to go.

The words sank coldly into the fore of his brain, without any kind of interception from his ears. They had no sound, but if they did they would sound like how the shadow of a passing bird of prey looks. They had no voice, but if they did it would be the voice of a sand dune as night falls and the wind picks up. It had no shape, but if it did it would be the shape of sloshing water before it meets a depression in the ground. Bucky clutched at his hair to ground himself. It was a trick of the drugs, or a kind of hypnosis— his head felt soft enough, it wouldn’t take much. There were no doubts that his cell was bugged. He only needed to answer the voices in his head aloud and then Hydra would have everything they needed. And then they would pick off the Avengers, starting with Steve.

Oh, so you suffer for a man. There’s _always_ a man.

In through the mouth and out through the nose.

Then again, what do I know. Maybe he is worth being turned into the human equivalent of ground beef.

“Fuck off,” he growled, so softly he was sure the bugs in his cell wouldn’t pick it up.

Ooh, pardon me. His love will surely see you through. I’m sure it will keep you warm tonight.

“Fuck _off_.”

Unless he doesn’t love you.

Bucky’s eyes snapped open, the trembling that racked his body going still for a long moment.

How do you know he loves you. Has he ever said he loves you. Or do you lavish your affections on him and hope one day they’ll be reciprocated.

He glanced about in the pitch black, the cold and the ambient noise temporarily dialed into background sensations. “What are you?” he whispered.

Do you not know.

He shook his head. “The only disturbing, paranormal being that should be in here is me, and I was here first. Scram.”

On the contrary, I’ve been here since before you were born. You have intruded upon me.

“Bring it up with management.”

You intrigue me, James Barnes. You suffer and soon you will die, all for a man who may or may not love you. I want to know why.

“It’s not just for him,” Bucky countered, choosing his words with care and talking so softly his breath hardly stirred the air. “The world needs the Avengers.”

But the world doesn’t need you in it. And you do not do it for the Avengers, do you. You do it for one man.

“What are you?”

What are you.

“I asked first.”

You did not.

Bucky shook his head and turned to face the wall, pressing his forehead against the unforgiving cinderblocks.

 

SHIELD required Bucky to visit a doctor twice a month in the beginning. Within weeks of being released from the SHIELD medical facility, his team of doctors proclaimed that their miraculous serum worked as expected. That is, it helped heal Bucky and then disappeared like it had never been there at all. With a clean bill of health, Bucky found himself sitting in his apartment staring at the black screen of his laptop.

He felt…cheated. As if he had shoplifted an expensive item and fully expected to get caught, but didn’t. He got away with it. And he knew he should be triumphant, or at least relieved, but there was just a hole in his chest. He felt empty, not as a bowl is empty and begs to be filled, but like a hand is empty and waits to strike.

Steve found him cuddling his flask of field medicine and watching _It’s Such a Beautiful Day._ Bucky looked up from his blanket cocoon and gave his boyfriend a watery smile. “It’s kind of a really nice day,” he rasped.

 

Bucky stared at the single long crack in the ceiling while his torturer du jour swished a cane through the air and asked him questions, first in Italian and then in heavily accented English. _Eyes forward, soldier._ “James Barnes,” he answered coldly, and started counting prime numbers. It was his own special game, to see how far he could get before he had to start over.

The cane swished through the air and met the bottoms of his feet with a crack. He screamed as the skin split open. Red droplets hit the floor. “James Barnes. Seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen…”

The cane swished. It cut through the air, a few experimental swings as if picking the right place to strike, waiting for the right moment. Swish. Swish. And struck with a crack and Bucky screamed as a new split opened along the soles of his feet and the injury before it started to dribble in earnest. He stared up at the crack ceiling and the ceiling stared back. “James Barnes,” he hissed, because he was a man with a name and he’d be damned if he died in this rat hole and no one knew it. “Nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-one…”

Swish. Swish. He screamed, but he kept the pain at arm’s length because the alternative would break him, break him into tiny pieces and all of the king’s horses and all the king’s men wouldn’t be able to piece Bucky back together again. “Thirty-seven, forty-one, forty-three.” He stared up at the ceiling and the ceiling stared back, and it didn’t have a face but if it did it would have been the face entropy, not of disorder but of things gradually falling apart.

Does he love you, James Barnes.

_Let it blow through me, like a wind through a house._

“James Barnes,” he rasped, and then laughed up into the face the ceiling didn’t have. “It’s kind of a really nice day.”

 

I’m a demon.

“Good to know.” He pressed his forehead against the cold of the cinderblock wall. He didn’t care anymore.

Usually there’s more disbelief than that.

“I don’t believe in anything.” He didn’t bother keeping his voice down. Hydra thought he had broken, and they were probably right. The problem, as far as they could see it, was that Bucky refused to acknowledge it.

I could get you out of here.

“Chyeah, just fold me up and stick me in your pocket. No problemo.”

Use your imagination, Barnes.

“No.”

No to using your imagination or no to…

“All of it. No to everything. Blanket dissent. Leave me alone.”

Then you will die.

“Tell me something I don’t know.” The demon didn’t have eyes, but if it did they would be boring into his back. He never dealt with demons—he wasn’t convinced he was dealing with one now—but from what he already knew they weren’t quite alive or dead. They were like fire, or a virus, or the idea that Aiden was an acceptable name for a child. Not alive, but they had a life of their own.

Your sacrifice will mean nothing. If you don’t tell them what they want to know, someone else will.

“Not my division.”

Humans have many redeeming qualities, but stubbornness isn’t one of them.

“Then I got some bad news for you.”

Why do you argue. Why do you die so willingly.

 

If Steve could have taken someone to a Stark gala, he would have taken Bucky. But he couldn’t—not without excess media curiosity—so Tony made sure an engraved invitation made it under Bucky’s apartment door. Bucky wore his best suit. It was, in fact, his only suit, and while it had fit him pretty well for his high school graduation, it didn’t fit him properly any more.

“Whaddaya think?” he asked in the middle of Steve’s living room.

“You look beautiful,” Steve told him with a straight face, but his eyes twinkled.

“Oh, we got a wise guy here,” Bucky snorted. Steve, dressed in a too-small undershirt and a pair of sweats, hopped off his couch and took Bucky’s flesh hand. He turned him and then, without warning, dipped him low. “Hey,” Bucky squawked, grabbing the front of Steve’s shirt to keep from hitting the floor. Chuckling, Steve righted him and pressed a chaste kiss on the corner of Bucky’s scowling mouth.

The gala itself was an Experience. Bucky always enjoyed dancing; if his family had had the money, he might have gone into tap or something. In high school, the theater teacher declared him the king of musical theater—Bucky never gave one hot damn about _Hamlet_ or _Wit_ , but if there was a musical going down in the auditorium he would be on the stage for auditions in a heartbeat. In college there were clubs to go to, weddings to crash. He even let his roommate drag him to a free Zumba class. Now he was an adult, and he got the chance to dance with the Actual Miss Potts, followed by a slow number with Natasha (she insisted he quit calling her Miss Black Widow). With some coaxing he was able to get Jane Foster onto the dancefloor; he did not know that Darcy Lewis came with Doctor Foster as a kind of package deal. Damn, but Darcy could dance. The woman was a fiend, and four songs trying to keep up with her was enough for a lifetime.

His shirt stuck to his back as he stepped onto the balcony for a moment of fresh air. January wind cut through him in an instant. His semi-famous winter coat hung safely in the coat room on the other side of the dance floor, but he didn’t want to mosey all the way around the throngs of dancers to get his coat, only to mosey all the way back around to the balcony. He leaned against the railing and lit a cigarette, trying not to imagine his ass getting stuck to the ironwork.

The French double doors opened and a gust of warm air and noise washed over him before Steve closed the doors behind him. “Hey.”

Bucky gave a sloppy salute with his cigarette. “Hey yourself.” He took a pull and puffed smoke over the railing. “Enjoying the gala?”

Steve grimaced. For someone with conventionally attractive features, Steve could pull amazing ugly faces. Bucky kept a few of his favorite on his phone, in an album marked _Definitely Not P0rn_. “If another politician asks me about my stance on legalizing weed or something I’m going to lose my actual mind.”

He took the proffered cigarette and took a long pull before passing it back. “Remember when the media wanted to call you Captain Capitalism?” Bucky grinned.

“Remember when my PR team almost clubbed me to death when I told O’Reilly we needed to reclaim the means of production?” Steve replied, tone morose but his mouth was pulling into a rueful smile.

Another wind blew over the house, tugging at Bucky’s hair with polar vortex ferocity and sinking straight through his flimsy suit jacket, biting to the bone. He shivered even as he took another drag off his smoke. “You don’t dance at these things?” Bucky said, and his teeth didn’t even chatter. “Politicians can’t ask you dumbass questions if you’re cuttin’ a rug, Rogers.”

Steve shrugged off his jacket and draped it over Bucky’s shoulders. The wool was heavy with his warmth and deposited it straight into Bucky’s skin. Steve fussed with the lapels and pocket square, completely unaffected by the winter cold even in his blue silk shirt, eyes not meeting Bucky’s. “I don’t dance.”

“Why not?”

Big hands settled over Bucky’s shoulders, and he could feel their furnace warmth even through two jackets and a shirt. Big square palms, hard and calloused, with long, sure fingers and nails trimmed with military precision. His lips quirked, full and pink, and his lashes dropped low, not looking Bucky in the face. “Waiting for the right partner.”

Bucky stubbed out the cigarette butt. “How much longer are you willing to wait, Cap?”

“Not much longer, Buck.” Steve reclaimed his jacket as they walked back into the heat and the light and the noise of the party, and Bucky reclaimed the dance floor. Sometimes he would catch Steve watching him while he nursed a flute of champagne he couldn’t feel, and Bucky would grin and send a wink his way.

And if he stayed that night in Steve’s hotel suite, the politicians and the media and Steve’s PR team need never know. They need never know about Bucky and Steve swaying slowly, barefoot on the trodden hotel carpet, with Bucky’s hands resting firmly on Steve’s waist and Steve’s hands warm and heavy at his shoulders. No one need know about them swaying to music from Bucky’s phone, tinny and too quiet in the room, or the way Steve curled closer to Bucky like he wished himself a smaller man when they eventually clambered to bed. Bucky kissed Steve stupid, until his full pink lips were kiss swollen and red, and they settled down to sleep. Steve drifted off first, curled up small with his head tucked under Bucky’s chin, Bucky tracing designs over Steve’s skin until sleep took him, too.

 

It is really quite frustrating.

For a little while Hydra let Bucky sleep, but his eyes snapped open at the words, shocking and cold like getting a cup of ice water dumped on your head in the middle of a hot shower. “What?” he growled at the ceiling. “Just drifting off and someone makes a stupid comment? I can’t even imagine.”

Pettiness does not become you, Barnes. Do you hate this place as much as I do.

“I think I got you beat, there.”

You do not. I have been trapped in these stone walls for nearly a hundred years. I have one purpose in this world.

“Being a nuisance?”

Quite. I will never understand the need of men to give everything an origin story, and I won’t satisfy your curiosity by debasing myself. But in a word, yes. I am a demon. I set things into motion. Sometimes terrible things.

“Then this hellhole should be right up your alley,” he grumbled. If a disembodied entity could give him a withering gaze, this one did.

I hate this place. I have had nearly a century of practice; I am very good at hating this place. I am a catalyst by nature. I set things into motion. I consume bitterness and misery and horror the way you consume oxygen.

“Good to know.”

But nothing I imagine could touch the horrors your kind inflict upon one another. And nothing changes. Ever.

“And you still want me to give in without a fight.”

At least then something would _happen_. Give Hydra the Avengers. Let them die, let the Earth shift on its axis, something, anything, even if it’s wrong. But instead you suffer willfully for a cause you can’t even name, for a man who might or might not love you, for a world that wouldn’t acknowledge your worth if you jumped up and down on it.

“Believe it or not, some things are too precious to light on fire just to enjoy the warmth and the pretty colors.”

I’ll take your word for it, James Barnes.

There was silence between them. Bucky felt as if the spirit, demon, whatever, was on the cusp of saying something, like someone taking a breath before getting into a conversation. The sensation made the back of his neck prickle, which he ignored, willing himself to go back to sleep. Unconsciousness crept up on him by inches.

There _is_ an alternative even you could get onboard with.

Bucky groaned and punched the wall. “I said no!”

Even the inside of your head would be preferable to the inside of these walls. Things change in your head, at least. Let me in. Give me your hand and legs and brain and let’s burn down something precious.

He scowled and pressed his forehead to the wall, not deigning to answer.

 

Bucky could never pinpoint what, exactly, it was about Steve Rogers that made him so…

Steve.

By all rights, Captain America should have been annoying as hell. He radiated goodness, a kind of bone-deep purity. He wielded earnestness like a club, but unlike a club he could actually beat some sense into people’s heads with a few too-earnest words. “Explain it to me again,” he said, brow furrowed.

Bucky didn’t need to look up from the book he was pretending to read to know that Tony just deflated. “Uh, it’s a joke, Capsicle.”

“I don’t get it.” If virtue had a heat signature, Bucky would have found some graham crackers and marshmallows for some good old fashioned s’mores. Of course, the marshmallows would have turned into bits of blackened carbon within a second, but a man could dream. Steve cleared his throat, and barreled forward to tackle some new-agey concept he didn’t understand. “Is the joke that the black man could be an EMT instead of a pharmacist? Or a drugstore clerk?”

Tony wilted a little more. And that was another thing about Steve; he didn’t just make you feel grubby when you stood next to him. Bucky always felt unpolished in Steve’s presence, like he could never stand straight enough, like his nails were never clean enough. Even after a grueling morning run, or ten hours of taking out one thousand righteous frustrations on helpless punching bags in the communal gym, with his too-small white shirt soaked and his face flushed and his hair mussed and the stink of exertion hanging about him, Steve gleamed. He shone, a hundred watt lightbulb in a room of candles, bright and striking no matter the circumstances. He made everyone—even Bucky—feel grubby next to him. But he also made people—especially Bucky—want to be better people.

Bucky had it bad. Steve’s smile made him want to go back to school and get a degree in something actually useful, even if SHIELD hired him into their linguistics and diplomacy branch out of pity. He made Bucky want to go to bed at a reasonable hour and eat his vegetables. He made Bucky want to visit children’s hospitals, and train service dogs, and suffer Clint’s terrible jokes with only a minimum of ridicule. Steve radiated wholesomeness, and he inspired greatness, and maybe the vector between the two was a special kind of madness.

And Bucky had it bad. Because he would rather be grubby with Steve than pristine with anyone else. He would rather be mad as a hatter with Steve than stone cold sane on his own. He looked at Steve, all-American, sweet as sugar, earnest and endlessly compassionate, and something in his brain went squishy. _This is how the Howling Commandos felt,_ he realized, equal parts awe and horror. _This is how Peggy Carter felt. This is why people followed him into the bowels of Hell._

“Alright, fine!” Tony said, evidently losing the battle between Steve’s big, sad, earnest eyes and his own internal pettiness. “It was a tasteless joke and I feel bad! Are you happy now?”

Steve smiled, a small sheepish thing. _I don’t deserve this,_ Bucky thought, even as his brain went impossibly squishier. “I’m only a little disappointed in you, Tony.”

Bucky closed his book and stared into the distance. He wasn’t even the subject of Steve’s sincere disappointment, but he felt speared just by being in the same room with it. And then he glanced over at Steve and had to squint for his brightness, for the purity and goodness rolling off him. _I’ll never deserve this._

 

James Barnes. The words sat on his tongue like copper and salt, suck on a penny. The words are just noise, meaningless even as he says them. He doesn’t know where he is. Not anymore. He doesn’t know where he is or who he is—only the darkness behind his eyelids and the pain in his whole body, burning cold cold cold. A gun makes it into his flesh hand—hadn’t he a metal prosthetic, where there was tingling absence, once? Pull the trigger, brace for recoil, the pop of noise that rattles through him, body and soul. Didn’t he have a metal prosthetic once? Coulda sworn he had it just a minute ago, forget his head if it weren’t attached. Pull the trigger, brace for recoil, breathe in and breathe out. Cleanse, banish, protect. Rinse and repeat.

He doesn’t know where he is, or who he is, or where he’s going. That information got burned out of him a lifetime ago. Someone gently peels his fingers off the handle of the gun and he would snap at them, lips peeled back like a feral dog protecting its food bowl, but he does know that such a reaction only brings the pain. The pain is his only constant. That and the jumble of words and numbers they haven’t managed to wrest from him yet. The paper target is riddled with holes, all concentrated into tight groups in the head and heart.

When they are finished with him they put him in the black room with the too-cold walls and the too-cold floor, and they let him rest, a tool neatly put away until they want to tinker with it some more. And sometimes he dreams, but no one needs to know that. No one need know about the dreams of stars twinkling around a figure made of the darkness of the void, poised over some work he could never decipher. And no one need know about the dreams about blonde man in the too-dark place, whose smiles were as bright as they were brittle, whose eyes were as blue as they were sad, who shed piety and compassion wherever he turned.

And if they know about the voice-that-isn’t, the one with words that sink into the meat of his brain like a cold spring in the bottom of a hot bath, no one says a thing.

Your name is James Barnes, it said, and if it could sound sad it would. Your names is James Barnes, and you do what you do for reasons beyond my knowing. You look for shapes in the clouds, and you’re always surprised by the first snowfall of the season, and your predisposition for cruelty is matched only by your propensity for kindness, Because You Are Human.

And I am learning what that Means.

 

Breathe in, breathe out, pull the trigger, brace for recoil. A different weapon every minute—handguns, pistols, rifles. Didn’t he have a metal prosthetic at one point? Coulda sworn it was just _here_. Breathe in, breathe out, pull the trigger, brace for recoil. He can feel a bruise purpling in the hollow of his shoulder. Bruises dotted his remaining wrist, his inner elbow, down both of his legs. He filed the damage away. _Needle tracks._ He was in trouble; needle tracks meant trouble. Maybe he was the trouble, but his handlers gave him a pomegranate before putting him away. With only one hand, he rent the tough rind with his teeth, spilled the little seeds down his front, let them plink wetly against the cement floor like hot droplets of blood. Red juice dribbled down his chin, sour and sweet in turns on his tongue. Some of the seeds were shriveled, smelling more of earth than fruit, though he hardly tastes them as they get swallowed down.

His handlers put in in the dark cold room, a weapon placed in a humidor away from the damaging rays of the sun, banished into a deep freeze that never froze deep enough. His mind turned, cold and detached, held at arm’s length and terribly quiet.

Your names is James Barnes. The knowledge sank into his brain and he pressed his only hand to his right ear. As if he could have a name.

Your name is James Barnes. You are Human, and you are a Vector for Change, and you are Alive here and now.

Your name is James Barnes and you are my friend.

 

“We’ll find him,” Tony assured Steve for what must have been the millionth time.

Steve paced the length of the hotel room. “It’s been six months,” Steve told him, his tone as dead as his eyes. Tony saw him fresh out of the ice, with Chitauri drones breathing down their necks and Loki on the loose. If memory served, Steve was abrasive, verbally combative and frosty as hell. After the fact, with Tony seeing a specialist for his PTSD (Rhodey and Pepper ganged up on him to make sure he went every single week) he was able to concede that maybe, possibly, Captain America had not been at his best. Because all his friends were dead, and so was the world he knew, and in his absence (read: after his crazy suicide by plane) the United States did fuck all with his sacrifice. And then Fury threw him back into field work with a team cobbled together with exasperation and rubber bands.

This was worse.

Tony saw Steve at his actual worst, and then he saw him with Bucky Barnes plastered to his side. It was like Steve finally had a reason to get out of bed on the days Fury wasn’t throwing him at the SHIELD assignments too risky to give to normal humans. It was like Steve finally had a reason to come back in one piece after those missions. Steve Rogers needed a Valium saltlick, but Bucky Barnes was definitely the next best thing.

Now, Tony could admit to being a nosy bastard. And he liked Bucky as much as the next Avenger, which meant that he snooped more than was healthy when Bucky spent an increasingly disturbing amount of time with the good captain. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking at at the time; chalk it up to forties’ stoicism, internalized homophobia, or natural macho manliness, but Steve Rogers never described Bucky as a boyfriend. Best friend? Constantly. Tony never caught them holding hands, smooching or being generally gross, but they gravitated toward one another. They were polar opposites: Bucky was dark, disabled, and very alive, while Steve was blonde, weirdly perfect, and spent most days dead from the neck up. But seeing them together, they seemed balanced in a way. Bucky had someone to focus his energy on, and Steve had someone to remind him how to human.

Tony wasn’t shy about calling Bucky a wizard. He made Steve a Real Boy again. The man who never smiled cracked terrible jokes to make Bucky laugh. The man who spent his Saturday night fighting punching bags to death showed up to Bucky’s impromptu movie nights and hogged the popcorn. The man who so carefully insulated himself against the outside world got sighted all over New York, accompanied by a surly-faced friend in a ridiculous amount of warm clothes. Under Bucky’s exuberant coaxing, Tony watched with his own eyes as Steve Rogers came to life. Captain America was an island, but Steve Rogers could not exist without the Winter Soldier, without Bucky Barnes.

And then Hydra took him. They snatched Bucky during a world peace assembly in Italy; he was representing SHIELD at the time, and his entire SHIELD entourage was found slaughtered, Bucky conspicuously missing. Fury told Steve first; Tony didn’t know until Steve sent a text out to the whole team. Part of him had been insulted that he hadn’t been told immediately, but the majority of his sensibilities were relieved he hadn’t been in the room when Fury told Steve.

When Tony saw him next, the light in his eyes that Bucky nurtured and stoked for so long had gone out. Fresh out of the ice, Steve had been bristly and angry. This was worse. Because he was cold, dead, methodical. He didn’t sleep if he could be out looking for his best friend. He didn’t sleep anyway. Tony could admit to being crap at touchy feely stuff, but watching his friend (and yes, he wouldn’t have said they were friends before Bucky waltzed into their lives, but he had to concede they were friends now), watching Steve die on the inside a little more with every day that passed was too much.

So he made Natasha do it. He conducted searches from Stark Tower and Natasha helped Steve with the ground search, checking in regularly and letting him know if they needed Iron Man’s expertise. Of course, they hadn’t been on the hunt more than two weeks before they tripped every internal alarm Hydra had—good job, Steve—and ended up recruiting some dude who had impressed Steve with his ability to jog up to the point of being violently sick without going over. Once again, good job, Steve.

The only reason Tony rented out this crappy hotel room (no frills, no big suites, no mints on the bed, all because they were incognito for maximum stealthiness) was because they were close to finding Bucky. And Steve was on the war path in a bad way. “Raze the base to the ground,” he said when Tony pulled up the satellite view of the Hydra stronghold.

Tony stared at him, open mouthed. No inflection, no remorse, just straight up destruction out of the mouth of America’s sweetheart. “Okay, ignoring the crazy eyes, what about all the people inside.”

“Put a bullet in each of ‘em.”

Tony didn’t know seven words could chill him to the bone. “Do you hear yourself?”

Steve shook his head. “Just stay out of my way, Stark.”

 

Bucky had superstitions. Not fun “throw salt over your shoulder” superstitions. Boring “hoard food under your bed because you never know when it’s gonna run out” superstitions. Bucky didn’t save receipts, but he did have a collection of jars. Pickle jars, jam jars, baby food jars. He had more than he knew what to do with, and it was never enough. Steve never mentioned it, not even when Bucky lined up his jars like soldiers, and looked over them, a general sizing up his army.

“My sister said something profound the other day,” he said. He twisted open a sizeable jam jar, still damp from a thorough wash.

“What did Becca say?” Steve prompted, propping his hip against the kitchen island, nursing a tooth-rottingly sweet cup of coffee while he watched Bucky work.

Lemon peels dropped into the bottom of the jar. He filled it the rest of the way with white vinegar. “She said, get this, she said humans are the strangest animals because we don’t just make decisions. Decisions make us.” He screwed the top back on and gave the jar a generous shake. Liquid sloshed.

“That is pretty profound,” Steve said quietly, like he was really thinking about those words, rolling them around in his head to give them some traction. Bucky felt the back of his neck heat up. Orange peels went into the next jar, topped with white vinegar, sealed and shaken.

“She’s a smart cookie. Probably read it from somewhere. She reads some crazy shit.”

“It’s interesting, though. I know, especially in my time, but now also, there’s this idea that some people are better than others. Like some people have better genetics than others, the shade of your skin or the size of your waist gives you an excuse to treat someone else like crap.”

“Like predestination for small-minded idiots.”

Steve snorted. “Something like that. It’s a load of bull. At the end of the day, people are people, and whether they’re good or bad depends on what they do.”

Bucky hummed. Bits of string and twisty ties from the odds and ends drawer go in another jar. “I don’t know if there’s good _or_ bad people.”

“Oh, you can spot the difference real quick in the right circumstances,” Steve told his coffee darkly.

Bucky picked up a Ball jar and turned it over in his fingers, metal digits clinking quietly against the glass. “We make decisions and decisions make us. I don’t know if I could live in a world with people who were strictly good and strictly bad. It all comes down to our intentions, and the choices we make, and the consequences. One man’s murder is another man’s mercy killing. One man’s charity is another man’s insult.”

“You think about this a lot, Buck?”

He hummed again, looking over his jar army with the eye of a general. “My sister says a lot of profound crap. She told me once that to be human is to be capable of unimaginable cruelty and indefinable kindness, sometimes at the same time. Maybe it’s not always the acts that define us. Maybe it’s not what we do, but what we think about what we do. How we decide to do it. I think about my own decisions constantly.” He gave Steve a sidelong look and waggled a peanut butter jar at him. “Intention is everything when it comes to ghost busting.”

Steve pursed his lips and crossed the distance between them, resting a hand on Bucky’s waist. “For me, there will always be good people and bad people. And you will always be one of the good people, Bucky Barnes.”

He could feel himself glowing, basking in the warmth of Steve’s uncomplicated approval. And he would never deserve this, but for a moment he wasn’t a slightly-grubby weirdo with an inexplicable jar collection and three boxes of Kraft Mac under his bed. For a moment, he was a Good Man in Steve’s Eyes, and he knew he would spend the rest of his life trying to live up to that kind of expectation.

 

You could let me in. Let me free you. Say two little words, 'I consent' and all this goes away. Two little words and I'm all yours. And we could wreak havoc across the face of this Earth, the likes of which humanity has never seen before.

He screwed his eyes shut and slammed his forehead against the wall, in the room where his handlers put him away when not in use.

It’s damned aggravating. There is nothing I could do to you that they haven’t already. You humans, so petty and frail, you hasten your own demise in the most creative ways possible. You slaughter one another in droves, _without_ any outside help, may I add.

“Shut up! Shut _up_!”

There is nothing demons like me can do to you. You’re all untouchable, either willfully deaf or willfully stupid. And if you’re not out killing each other with knives and guns and bombs, you kill each other with words.

“Shut up!” he screamed.

It’s sickening, the way you lay into your closest friends and dearest family members. You carve each other hollow with little phrases said in _love_ , of all things. If you don’t dash your loved ones against the rocks with turns of phrase like ‘Be realistic,’ or ‘You’re not even trying,’ you kill them with the things you don’t say.

“Shut up! Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”

They choke on the silences. You all do. You let the quiet consume you until there’s nothing left but _bones_.

The words fell silent abruptly, not that they made any noise to begin with. He didn’t know who he was or where he was; he knew only the blood pounding in his ears, the cold that made his joints ache, the darkness behind his eyes that went beyond the absence of light. The back of his neck prickled, and he waited for the coming onslaught.

What you don’t do to each other, the atrocities you fall just short of committing, you do to yourself.

If he closed his eyes, he could just about picture blond man, an angel. The facial features were too distorted to pinpoint, but if he saw the face in person, he would know it. He would know it instantly. And he would know the way the man, his own personal apparition, would wear righteousness like a cloak of feathers, downy white and cascading down his back. Sadness would be in his eyes and in his smile, but there would be kindness, too. And, wretched thing, he knew that _he_ would be grubby, terrible, noncompliant. Maybe that was why he was here. Whatever he had done to deserve this, it must have been terrible. Maybe he put the sadness in the angel’s eyes. He released a breath and went still. “It’s nothing short of what I deserve,” he whispered into the cement floor, too quiet even for the cell’s bugs to pick up. 

You kill yourself from the inside out, with guilt and shame and martyrdom. Just like you pick out pictures in the clouds, and you’re surprised by the first snowfall of the season. Because you are human.

Your name is James Barnes. You are my friend. And I am learning what this means.

 

Natasha waited until Steve left the hotel to pick up some groceries before dragging Tony into the bathroom. “Look, I’m flattered—“

“Shut up, Stark.” She pried the frosted window open and squinted out into the street before sliding it back in place. “We need to talk about Steve.”

“Just a quick warning! I’m pretty squeamish so—“

“We need to be prepared in case we can’t retrieve Bucky. Six months with Hydra, we’ll be lucky to get a corpse.”

Tony scrubbed a hand over his face and hopped up to sit on the sink. “Yeah, I know. I think Steve knows it too. He’s very gung-ho on the idea of burning Hydra to the ground, base by base for preference.”

“Tony. It’s getting to the point that a corpse is our best case scenario. Next best is finding nothing. Ever.”

She kept her face too composed, her voice too even. Horror creeped along Tony’s spine. “And our worst case scenario?”

“We find a Bucky that Hydra twisted into something useful,” she told him, lips thinning on the last word like she hated it.

“Useful like…?”

“Like as a lab rat. Or an assassin. Possibly both. Worst case scenario is we find a Bucky who poses a sizeable threat to SHIELD and Steve himself.”

Tony tried to imagine a Bucky that would hurt someone. Unfortunately, it was an image that sprang too easily to mind. The man was decent at unarmed combat, thanks to Natasha and Steve, a damned good gunman thanks to Clint, flexible as hell after Bruce got through with him…

“Our Bucky? An assassin? Pff,” he said weakly.

“Hydra has done a lot more with a lot less,” she said, grim. “And if it comes down to it, Bucky’s life or Steve’s, who do you think is going to walk away?”

“It won’t come to that. I’m not going to let it come to that.”

“We need to be prepared.”

 

Handlers fitted him with a shiny, metal arm. He never saw its like before, but it fit perfectly to his stump, closed around his shoulder, filled the empty space where an arm should have been all along but where phantom pains and spasms plagued him. He opened the metal hand, closed it. They had him lift and egg and carry it around, which he did without breaking it. They put a billiard ball in his hard, shiny palm, and at their command he squeezed until it cracked.

The weight of the arm was balancing, a balm to his slouching spine, a comforting presence like a coat that smells of home.

(Though he did not know where home was, would not know it if he stared straight at it.)

There were tests and tests and _tests_. He ran around a track, sometimes with a heavy backpack, sometimes without. He practiced firing different weapons with both hands. (Perfect shot every time, an ace gunman, a miracle of science, surely.) He lifted lead weights with each arm in turn until he could not budge the plates from the floor.

(He kept his eyes trained on a long, meandering crack in the cement floor. It stared back.)

Handlers tested him. They tested him first to failure, then to the brink of destruction. They broke him down to his composite parts and then deposited him into the too-cold dark room, for when he wasn’t in use, like a dagger being slid into its sheath.

The room might have been noisy. It would have been noisy, intolerable, painfully loud if he had misbehaved. But it was quiet now. He lay on the too-cold cement floor, let it leach the heat from him because the cold was like an old friend. He stared up into the darkness, and if the darkness had shape it would have looked like a face. And if the silence had a voice, it would have sank cold words into him.

Nothing changes here. It’s the same thing time after time, and I am so sick of these walls. Your name is James Barnes. You will be Hydra’s weapon. And you will learn what that means.

 

“This will be your final test.”

The handler had no name. Really, he knew that all his handlers had names, that he wasn’t privileged to know what they were, but some stubborn bit of him still maintained that they had no names. They were like him. Nameless, directionless, broken down and then put together all wrong. The sweat of fear clung to them, acrid and disgusting, and there was hate in their eyes even when they smiled. Especially when they smiled.

The handler du jour led him down a corridor and opened a thick metal door into a square room. The walls were white, the lighting painfully bright, the smell of industrial strength cleaners heavy on the air. A drain waited in a dip in the floor, innocuous in its shine. Squeaky clean. He turned his eyes on the single occupant in the room: a man tied to a metal chair. Burns scored the skin on his head and tears rolled down his sallow cheeks.

The handler pushed a slim handgun into his hand. “Your assignment is to eliminate this target. And then you will be ready.”

He did not ask any questions. He did not ask who the man was, or why he needed to be eliminated, or what he would be ready for. Questions led to pain.

He tested the heft of the gun, popped it open to check the bullets inside. Yes, all there and accounted for. The target cried in earnest, blubbering through his gag as fat tears stained his shirt. The gun clicked back together. He sighted down its nose. It fit the palm of his hand perfectly, like his hand and the gun had been made for each other. He took aim. He fired. Red sprayed across the pristine white of the room.

 

I think I underestimated you.

He stared up at nothing. The noise in his personal humidor crossed the pain threshold, but at least it drowned out his own screaming. Unfortunately, it also took shape and dropped chilly little words into the riot in his brain.

How long did they spend ‘correcting’ you, I wonder. Twelve hours at least. But there’s nothing they can do to you that could touch what you do to yourself.

He was too stiff to move, or he might have thrown his remaining arm over his eyes. Even his eyelashes hurt. That was a new low, even for him.

With all the firearms they give you, it’s a miracle you don’t kill your handlers more often. What possessed you to do it. They hollowed you out and stuffed what they want you to be inside. You know the consequences. You know them intimately. What made you do it.  

He already screamed his throat raw, so he didn’t bother speaking aloud. His breath barely stirred the air as he mouthed, “I am James Barnes. I am human.”

So are they. The people who hurt you are human. They kill and they bathe in the blood of innocents and they call it righteousness. They call it security. What sets you apart from them, James Barnes.

The room screamed down at him, coming at him from all sides in the terrible darkness, and the pain of it lived inside his bones but he kept his mind at arm’s length, safely out of danger. His mouth quirked upward, and if the dark could squint at him it did now. “Nothing,” he whispered, breathing the single word without any intervention from his ruined voice. He didn’t know who he was, or where or why. But he did know one thing. “You are my friend,” he murmured. “And you are learning what it is to be human.” he licked his cracked lips and immediately regretted it; they stung terribly, and iron flooded his mouth. “Us humans, we don’t just make decisions. Decisions make us.”

 

The building rattled. He knelt in the middle of the blindingly white room beside the floor drain, naked and missing his prosthetic arm. He knew what came next. Dust drifting down from the ceiling didn’t factor into it, though.

The thick metal door slammed open and a small team of armed guards flooded in. “Get up,” a nameless handler half-snarled, half-screamed. He obeyed, unfolding smoothly.

Cold words, a shock of knowledge like falling face first into a cold spring: Something is coming.

They herded him, still uncomfortably naked and armless, down the corridor and up a flight of cracked steps and into another room, one all too familiar to him. They pushed him into the chair and strapped him down. They pushed his head against the headrest and tightened the vise to hold him in place. The mouth guard waited on a technician’s tray; the whole thing rattled whenever a man in a white coat touched anything.

And then someone—he pegged him as the Big Man, the one in charge—strolled into the room. The building shuddered again (and wasn’t the whole thing sitting in stone, under the earth?) and while the technicians and guards muttered and stirred, the smell of fear sweat and the sound of itchy trigger fingers overwhelming, the Big Man moved like he had all the time in the world. He was completely unaffected, untroubled. Like he could fall off a high place and just deal with the ground when it came up to meet him.

“It’s your lucky day,” he grinned, and patted him on the cheek. He stared straight ahead at a crack down the wall. The crack stared back.

The Big Man went on. “We’ve decided to give you a second chance. I know, unusual after that little debacle yesterday, but I’m in a forgiving mood. And I know you’re very sorry.” He grinned with all his teeth, and there was hate in his eyes, the kind of hate the runs lukewarm but can boil over in no time flat.

“This is your second chance. We’re going to give you a little wipe down, and then you’re going to take out some intruders for us. Don’t worry, they’re going to try to kill you, too, so it should be a bit easier.” A technician sidled up on his side and slid the metal prosthetic into place but didn’t activate it. Limp and heavy, the white coat still strapped the wrist to the chair. The Big Man brandished a photo in front of his eyes, a blond man with full, pink lips and sad eyes, a blue helmet with a white A on the forehead. He knew the man in an instant; he would know him anywhere. “Our intruders are being led by this man.” Something went boom in the distance, as if to emphasize the point. “He is leading a team, four in total. Eliminate the target, with extreme prejudice.”

His nostrils flared, and he would have struggled against the chair’s straps if he thought it would have mattered. If he had any saliva left in his mouth, he would have spat in the Big Man’s face. “I won’t,” he mouthed, voice failing him.

“I’m glad that’s settled,” the Big Man boomed, and turned away so he wouldn’t have to witness the screaming and convulsions. Another explosion went off, somewhat closer than before. The technicians swarmed around him with trembling hands.

“I won’t,” he pleaded, staring at the crack in the wall.

I need your go ahead. I need to hear you.

The white coats subsided, stepping a safe distance away. He trembled in the confines of the chair, because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to say no after the electricity ran its course. They would put a firearm in his hand and he would go to work, and the man with yellow hair and eyes that were as blue as they were sad would fall under his spray of bullets. And he would be lost forever. First there would be blinding pain, the taking of memories, of self, of everything, and then he would be lost forever.  _I don’t deserve this._ He sucked in breath after whistling breath. _I don’t deserve this!_ A technician lifted the mouth guard to his face. He stared at the crack in the wall and the wall stared back.

“I consent,” he breathed.

A technician flipped the switch at the same time that the lights went out. All of them. Darkness flooded the room, washing over the occupants.

His name was James Barnes. He was human. He made decisions and his decisions made him. And he opened his eyes in the dark and he could _see_. His eyes registered pitch black, but something behind his eyes blinked, saw the room as if the darkness were broad daylight. The weak-sighted guards fumbled and scrambled, the weak-sighted technicians cowered. He laughed.

His name was James Barnes, and he was a vector for change, a catalyst, a demon. His metal prosthetic whirred to life. The chair’s straps, suddenly flimsy, snapped with hardly any effort. The vise gave a tortured shriek as he closed a hand over it.

Guns went off, blinding and deafening at once. James Barnes sidestepped every clumsy assault, divesting one Hydra agent of his weaponry. He barely needed to squeeze off a shot; they were like fish in a barrel, if half the fish were panicky and armed to the hilt and couldn’t tell whether they were killing their own or not. Before the smoke settled, he peeled a guard out of his uniform and pulled it on, leaving the visor off and the helmet unbuckled in case he needed to lose it in a hurry. The heavy metal door did not give when he tried to push it open, so he kicked it hard and watched it fly off its hinges.

No light in the hallway? No problem. He could see as if it were flooded with sunshine, while frantic guards groped blindly and lost their minds when he opened fire on them.

Something itched at the back of his skull. I forgot what it was like having a body.

“I’m trying to concentrate,” he rasped.

So am I. Are you aware that nothing is working properly.

“Sue me. Or don’t.” A Hydra technician lost one of his kneecaps and fell down in a shower of yellowed documents and screaming. He stepped over him and kept going.

Ridiculous. What is this memory marked ‘Definitely Not P0rn.’

“I don’t remember. I’m sure it’ll come back to me.” He sprinted through the corridors, taking pot shots at anyone and everyone wearing a Hydra uniform, following the sounds of fighting and explosions and death.

Because that is where the man who may or may not love you is.

He grunted an affirmation, pausing to kick open a promising door. The console winked at him, inviting.

Ooh, that is nasty. I keep underestimating you, Barnes.

He grimaced and let the demon borrow his hands for a moment, punching in sequences and passcodes forgotten for the past decade at least. Then he took his hands back and ran like his ass was on fire. The black of the corridor turned red, bathed in emergency lighting as alarms blared from every direction.

He sprinted up the stairs, up and up and up until he came to the landing where the fighting was really popping. A metal shield banged against the wall, inches from his ear, and bounced back into Captain America’s waiting hand. He drew his arm back, and would have unleashed the wrath of his righteous fury on him if he hadn’t grabbed the good captain by the shoulder strap and tugged him along the landing, to where the he knew the exit to be.

“Move it, punk!”

“Bucky?” Steve gaped.

Who the hell is Bucky.

He blinked the inquiry away, giving his head a shake for good measure. “That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”

Natasha bowled a Hydra goon to the ground, and glared up at him through blood-streaked hair. “Bucky?” she demanded, gun pointed away but her finger poised on the trigger.

“Eeyup,” he said. “And we need to get the fuck outta here. This place is rigged to blow and I‘d like to be outside the blast radius, if it’s all the same to you.”

Steve, even gob smacked, had the sense to say as much into his comm, and then they were making a break for it, running for the underground garage exit, running for the big metal doors.

Which closed as soon as they got to them. Tony Fucking Stark, in full Iron Man regalia, touched down with some dude sporting a winged jetpack (how much did he miss? what the hell?). Red lights flashed, the base’s alarms reaching a fevered pitch that couldn’t even touch Bucky’s pain threshold. Natasha scrambled for some kind of console, some control that could bring the metal door back open. Stark fired a few repulsors at the metal, which did nothing but leave scorch marks. Wing Dude took to the air again, buzzing along the ceiling of the hangar for a way to open the doors. Steve chattered into his comm, calling on the Hulk but it was too late. They were out of time.

Bucky took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. _Gonna need some help, here._

And why should I. I’m getting everything I want and more, whether you survive or not.

Images flashed through his mind, unbidden: four or more Avengers incinerated by the Hydra base explosion, the world falling to chaos, the demon free at last to wander the scorched Earth, politics leading to wars leading to entropy, empires falling, oceans rising, the world shifting on its axis. He chewed his inner cheek. He crouched by the metal door, wriggled his metal fingers under it, and braced himself. _Help me. It’s what friends do for each other. We make choices and our choices make us._

Mmm. I don’t know.

_And I’ll introduce you to all the things you never saw in these drab stone walls. Novelties you could never imagine. I’m gonna show you the future._

He lifted hard, really throwing his back into it. The metal door didn’t move.

_You think I won’t haunt your ass, motherfucker? My disembodied spirit is going to chase you straight to the Apocalypse, don’t think it won’t. You think I’m a stubborn son of a bitch, you ain’t even seen me mad._

With a heave, the metal door screamed upward. He trembled under the weight of it, but he could hold it. Natasha rolled through, with Wing Guy and Stark hot on her tail. Steve climbed underneath last, and then Bucky rolled to the other side as the door came crashing back down. His spine felt like jelly, and he couldn’t even feel his legs anymore (probably a blessing), and then they were running.

The blast caught them, shockwaves and heat and debris, but they escaped the worst of it. Fire licked up into the night sky, but Bucky wasn’t looking back. No, he looked straight up at the twinkling stars, some of them hidden behind a cloak of clouds, and with eyes that could parse the darkness as readily as the light, he could see shapes in the clouds. He laughed.

He dropped to his knees in the mushy spring grass, head thrown back and he laughed and laughed.

And what is so funny, Barnes.

_There’s a horsehead up there._

He laughed and laughed and didn’t bother to explain himself, not to his demon and not to the Avengers, who looked sympathetic and suspicious in turns.

“Bucky,” Steve said, dropping down into the grass and holding out his hands, like he didn’t want to spook a wild animal. “Bucky, talk to me. Buck?”

He fought for breath, and turned streaming eyes on Steve. His Steve, with his sun bright smile and sad eyes, who loved like he was running out of time but he’d be damned if he said as much. “It’s kind of a really nice day,” Bucky rasped.

Steve had to carry Bucky to the extraction point, not that he minded.

 

And this is how the story ends. It ends with a long hospital stay and whispered debriefings and way more therapy than he wanted to attend. It ends with Bucky trying to get drunk, but finding out his newfangled metabolism wouldn’t allow it (thanks Hydra). It ends with Steve taking an extended vacation from field work so he could be sad in Bucky’s presence instead of sad far away. It ends with Wing Guy getting a name (Sam Wilson) and joining the team, living on Steve’s floor because Steve spends so much time on Bucky’s floor he might as well take the unused space. It ends with Natasha watching him closely, and though he never tells anyone on the team what Hydra did to him, somehow he knows that she _knows_. Maybe not about the demon, but the other stuff.

And the demon came to its own end. Not with a bang, but with silence. It didn’t make a peep in the hospital, during debriefings, or impromptu Avengers movie night. More than once Bucky found himself scrunching his eyes shut and mentally groping through his own head, looking to see if it was still there, or if it had left a trace. A scar. A mark. Some memento of his own trial by fire, a reminder that he might be lucky to get away with being captured by Hydra alive, but not unscathed. And yet, besides the bodily mutilation, the truly FUBAR state of his mental health, the recurring nightmares and the inability to look at pomegranates ever again, it was like none of it ever happened.

Bucky curled up with a blanket and his flask marked Field Medicine, watching _It's Such_ _a Beautiful Day_ and feeling crappy, like he had cheated and got away with it, because some habits won’t die easily. The room was quiet and dim and he was warm if not buzzed, and the inside of his mind was perfectly tranquil and warm as well.

At least until something stirred, scratched at the inside of his skull and made the back of his neck prickle.

Hello, James Barnes. I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me.

“Aw hell.”

Steve stirred sleepily. “What’s that, Buck?”

“Go back to sleep, Stevie. Just talking to myself.”

**Author's Note:**

> "It's Such a Beautiful Day" is a really good movie if you like to get drunk and cry. It will ruin your life. 10/10, would recommend.
> 
> I think there will be another sequel, in which we learn more about our demon friend if Steve doesn't hog the spotlight. If the sequel (threequel?) doesn't make it to the archive by February of 2016, please feel free to badger my tumblr [here](http://moontyrant.tumblr.com/).


End file.
